I miss him.

He died.  Granddaddy died.  And I found out via Facebook.

Let's rewind.  On New Year's Eve morning, my parents decided that they were going to drive down to Alabama to be with the family and go see Granddaddy in the hospital.  I wanted to go with them, but I had to babysit that night for a few hours and I wasn't feeling so stellar.  My parents left in the afternoon and made their way down.  I checked in throughout the day to see if they had any updates.  He wasn't doing well at all.  They'd found fluid in his lung and were going to try to remove it to ease his breathing.  I prayed all day that he would recover and be able to ring in the new year with us.  I arrived at my babysitting destination at 5:40pm.  The couple was going to an early dinner and said they'd be home around 8:30pm.  I called Mommy Dearest around 7:15pm to see if they'd made it to Alabama and if they had any news.  I asked how Granddaddy was doing and Mommy Dearest hesitantly replied that he wasn't doing well.  I texted back and forth with BFFAE about tentative plans for the night.  After babysitting, I was planning on going home, changing clothes, and heading to her house.  I put the little boys to bed went downstairs to the living room a few minutes before 8pm.  I knew I had some time to kill before the couple got home, so I started browsing Facebook on my Blackberry.  Everyone's status seemed to be about their plans for the evening and wishing everyone else a Happy New Year.  Then I saw it.  My cousin's wife had posted the sentence that I've been dreading my whole life, particularly this past week: Cynthina is ringing in the new year with a heavy heart.  Claude (Jason's Granddaddy) passed away today.  My heart sank, I burst into tears, and I almost threw up.  I immediately called Mommy Dearest.  She answered the phone and all I could say was, "He died, and no one told me??"  As it turns out, she had called BFFAE and filled her in.  The plan was for Mommy Dearest to call me once I got to BFFAE's house so that I wouldn't be alone when I got the news.  Well, thanks to technology, that plan failed.  My parents had been a few miles away from the hospital at 5:43pm when they got the call that Granddaddy had left us.  They opted not to remove the fluid from his lung because his body couldn't take the strain and they didn't want to cause him any unnecessary suffering.  I spent NYE alternating between crying, rationalizing that things happen for a reason and that he's in a better place now, being angry that I wasn't there, and trying to pack clothes for everyone to wear to the funeral.  Unfortunately, my good friend Harley Chick's Grandpa had just been diagnosed with stage 4 bladder cancer and died the same day.  And my Grandmother's brother that had been placed in the care of Hospice passed away at 1am on New Year's Day.

I need some time to catch my breath on this one, plus I may or may not have started crying while writing this.

To be continued....

A